On September 24, 2013 Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute published an essay critiquing Bruce Bennett’s new RAND report released on September 19, 2013 on the possibility of the collapse of North Korea. Hayes takes to task those who us who have warned and written about the possibility of North Korean regime collapse, to include yours truly.
I make no apologies for being a “collapsist.” I do not have thin skin about being challenged and in fact hope that Peter Hayes puts together a conference to discuss it as I will gladly attend (Editor’s Note: WOTR would be happy to host a podcast debate at the Jefferson Hotel bar). But I do feel passionately about being prepared for the worst and not just hoping for the best. It is true that North Korea did not collapse in the 1990’s when those of us began looking at the problem in detail. Perhaps the life of the regime has been extended due to the decade long Sunshine Policy. But few predicted when it would collapse, only that if it does collapse the R.O.K./U.S. Alliance and international community had better be prepared. We still believe that to be so.
While people can wish away regime collapse, it is the height of irresponsibility to not prepare for an event that is not only very possible, but could have a catastrophic impact on international security and stability as well as the global economy because the economies of the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, and Russia would be effected by a collapse. This is what prudent strategists, policymakers, and military planners do. It could happen next week or next month; next year or in a decade or longer. While we can hope that there will a collapse would be more akin to the demise of East Germany and the Warsaw Pact, most who take even a cursory look at the situation on the Korean Peninsula can see the great differences that exist that make the potential for conflict and humanitarian suffering far greater than any European analogies of the last three decades.
Effective preparations for collapse could actually have the benefit of mitigating the worst the effects of collapse so much so that collapsists like me will be accused of over-reacting. But it is in the absence of preparation that the greatest catastrophes in war and human suffering occur. I am happy to be proven wrong but I think the only way to have a chance at preventing the worst is to prepare for the worst. Those who count on north Korea not collapsing do a great disservice to the Alliance and the Korean people (those in the North and South).
Further complicating regime collapse is the possibility that the process of collapse could lead to a decision to go to war so collapse and war planning should be linked. That will be a subject for future columns.
(For the record and to correct two errors in Dr. Hayes’ essay, the monograph I wrote on north Korean collapse was in 1996 vice 2006 and I have never been the “head” of US Special Forces in Korea, simply the Director of Plans Policy, and Strategy for one tour and the Chief of Staff for a second tour at the Special Operations Command Korea.)
David S. Maxwell is the Associate Director of the Center for Security Studies and the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. He is a retired US Army Special Forces Colonel with 30 years of service.
Photo Credit: Graeme Lawton, Flickr
CD Wright 
McCallister 
Dave 
Dave Maxwell 
Well done Sir! We still have a long way to go in terms of a “whole of government” approach to potential collapse in the DPRK. Thanks largely to you, Dr. Bennett, Mr. Collins, Dr. Bechtol, and others the DOD is at least ahead of the game.
I was stationed in Germany when the German-German portion of the Iron Curtain was dismantled. German media at the time reported extensively on the presence of South Korean government planners who monitored Chancellor Kohl’s efforts to merge and reintegrate East Germany (two very distinct and differing efforts) into the Greater Germany we know today. Many of the same concerns of the Kohl administration, such as how to merge and integrate the two disparate German cultural and social entities and how to fund the effort are the same that challenges South Korea planners today. Much discussion as to the social and economic costs of merger and integration have yet to be addressed in the West but I venture to guess that South Korean planners have been busy working these issue since at least 11 November 1989. I submit the greatest challenge to merger and integration may not be economic but social and psychological. The citizens of nKorea will have to be deprogrammed first having been members of a personality cult for such a long time.
Are you saying that we do not have a plan? I can only assume that since this was written by a man of such caliber and expertise that we do not have a plan and you are trying to provide a warning. If we have no plan, who do we need to fire?
Plans are one thing. Active preparations are another. Plenty of planning has been done. Peter Hayes is criticizing the fact that we have been planning for collapse since the 1990’s and that because the regime has not collapsed we were wrong. Some of us would argue that it just has not happened yet and I am of the opinion that we not only need to plan but also prepare.
COL Maxwell,
You are absolutely correct. We need to continuously update the plans we have for the eventual collapse of nKorea. I live in Florida, one of the nation’s biggest Hurricane magnets. We were promised a number of Hurricanes this year, but as of yet they have not occurred. If I was to follow Mr. Hayes’ logic there would be no reason to update plans and prepare for the next/eventual Hurricane.
David, the views you have attributed to me above are simply not what I said, and anyone who doubts it should read my essay “Thinking about the Thinkable: DPRK Collapse Scenarios Redux.” Rather, in sum, I said that that after 20 years of worrying (correctly) about collapse, we must also worry about non-collapse related contingencies, and plan for those; and that Bruce’s report–and many before–slip over the edge of “If…then” contingency planning to “Not if…when” predictive arguments, which have a political life of their own. Given that the DPRK hasn’t collapsed, it would be prudent to examine some of the other (not nice) contingencies that arise, both military and otherwise. By far the bulk of the public analysis as focused on collapse scenarios and the outcome is biased policy presumptions that have little relation to reality. I prefer to address the full spectrum of realistic possible outcomes, collapse, non-collapse, and all those in-between. Unfortunately, few of them are inherently peaceful, let alone secure and sustainable outcomes for Koreans on both sides of the border.